Doppler Affect
by Meredith-Grey
Summary: He was the speeding train, the magnetic wonder. Facts trump all. Season six timeline. Rory is unable to surpass the truth. One shot. Revised.


**Title:** _Doppler Affect_

**Rating: **_R_

**Date Written:** _1-20-08_

**Summary: **_He was the speeding train, the magnetic wonder. Facts trump all. Season six timeline. Rory is unable to surpass the truth._

**Disclaimer:** _I don't own Gilmore Girls, the characters belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino and the WB._

**A/N:** _Just something I came up with. Starts out in episode 6.18. Contains mature content. Reviews would be greatly appreciated._

Books. Stacked high and tumbling with ideas; voices; suspended in ink and syntax. Her hair felt thick and heavy, her mouth a little tired from pressing and chewing on the inside of her lip. The day had ended. Her makeup appeared in vestige form, mostly worn away, perhaps from . . . anxiety? One of the first things they taught her in the DAR was to always look composed, put together—not like the insane cache of ideas rocketing around in her brain that she'd begun entertaining. She ran the pad of her thumb over her bonny fingers, parts and pieces beginning to formulate a list.

The Point Of Tonight's Exercise? _Undecided._ Favorable Outcomes? _None previously recorded._ Course Of Action? _What would a Wellesley girl do?_

Thoughts about Betty Warnen, suffocating beneath an avalanche of inadequacy, choking on pearls. She wanted to dive into his gold-flecked eyes and never resurface.

He was pulling her along, tinny strings, holding her shoulder blades, her eyelids, her fingertips. They never stood a chance together, not then. She won't waist neurons on now. She's spoken for and he's coaxing her out of her restraints, coloring her eyes and cheeks. His hold on her is no secret and that idea alone is enough to hitch her breathing.

Wasn't it a bit obvious? Her cheeks turning a tell tale shade of rouge. She'd always been a terrible liar. Trust Jess to remember this.

**I.**

She pulled over on the side of the road, stopping for a good twenty minutes with a piece of paper spread flat out over the steering wheel. Her pen looked archaic and faintly brown as she scribbled down reasons for herself. It was how she justified her own thoughts. The singing pass of headlights distracted her, their sound distorted through the Doppler Affect. Everything starting out loud, bright; uncontrollably upon her with force and finality.

The light of her dashboard was all she had to go by. Battery running, orange and green coloring the lines of her paper, she'd have to re-write the whole thing later but that wasn't important. She'd get odd looks for it, perhaps a raised eyebrow. Her teeth sank in to the cap of her pen.

_Pro number thirty-seven, I'll never have to explain myself._

**II.**

She didn't like the smell of alcohol. The scent sank into her hair and her clothes. It burned her nose and throat when it entered her lungs.

It was just one of those things that fell in the_ Vice_ category. Everybody had something. She stayed organized and planned out everything, times, dates, reasons, motives; sometimes she even provided quotes and photographic evidence for her actions in daily life. It was obsessive, quirky, and completely her own. It was a personality tick, a coping mechanism. When her father forgot her birthday she dusted the whole house and rearranged her sock drawer. When Dean broke up with her, for he first time, she bought air freshener and organized her non-fiction collection by the Dewey Decimal System. When Logan started drinking she just spent more time away from home.

Lots of laughter, what literature referred to as "a roaring good time." Colin and Fin were worse than encouraging, worse than insufferable. After weeks of dodging and avoidance, she went home. To Stars Hollow, not Hartford to her Grandparents or New Haven to stay with Paris. The snowy streets of her hometown looked like gingerbread and vanilla frosting. Cinnamon and crème.

Lorelai opened the door before she even made it up the steps.

_Con number twelve, my mother never liked him much._

**III.**

"I don't see the point anymore. This is so stupid." She was tired, cold, confused; she massaged her eyes and brushed her bangs out of her face.

"Thinking isn't stupid. Dangerous, yes, but not stupid. In fact, I'd say it's recommended." Lorelai regarded her carefully, keeping her quips and comments to herself.

"You'll agree with me by the time I finish explaining it all to you."

The older woman shrugged. "We'll see."

**IV.**

She began to unfold the list, all four pages of it. Lorelai took it with a solemn expression. She was holding back, Rory could see it etched in her face. Faint lines criss-crossing over her forehead, worry in the way she held her thin lips together to create a firm stroke of rose.

"When did you start this?"

She flipped to the first page at the right-hand corner. "A few months ago."

Her mother stayed silent for a long time, not out of callousness, merely contemplation. She was reading it, the whole thing, line by line. She stopped near the bottom of page two and bit her lip

"Pro number sixty-seven, Jess has become more than what I ever believed to be possible." She looked into her daughter's eyes for permission. Rory made no sign of distress.

"Con number twenty-eight, I am no longer certain of my ability to be the person he needs."

**V.**

Logan was starting on her, tugging on her leash. It was nearing the end of the semester and he was getting antsy, grasping for a commitment.

"It's what people are going to expect."

"Ha," she slipped. "It's not what_ my_ family's expecting." Rory cast a shifty glance at the box he'd left on the coffee table, it's smooth, blue velvet covering reminded her of a theater curtain. Act one, stage right, Rory Gilmore's gone and forgotten her lines.

"I think you should reconsider."

Breeze lifted her hair, the dewy springtime. The world was green and carved from emeralds.

"I need to leave."

It was easy to play along, to humor Logan and his Life and Death antics and his bottles of Absolute. But Rory Gilmore couldn't lie, and now wasn't the time to start.

**VI.**

In the foray of boxes and moving out, she was moving back in with Paris, he was going to London and starting his career, she didn't notice its absence, not at first. The list had been shoved into one of her old textbooks from freshmen year. Something dull like Environmental Science. They were attempting to stay on civil terms, her and Logan, and this was best achieved through a minimal exchange of words.

He stood in the doorway of their former bedroom, silently. She had boxed up the last of her books, all that was left to attend to. She labeled the side in clear, black marker. Organization. Her brain tick, tick, ticking away.

She stood, tucking the marker into her pocket, a few seconds from grabbing the last of her belongings and vacating the premises.

When she saw what was clutched in his hand—knuckles tight, fingers strained—her stomach emptied out and sank down her legs, forming a puddle where she had once stood.

He began to read off the neatly lined pages of notebook paper.

"Pro number eighty-three, Jess has the ability to make all situations feel intimate." There was a sickeningly long pause after this. "Con number forty-four, whenever I'm around him I feel unworthy of said intimate situations."

Her lips were slack, her jaw loosening in shock.

"Want me to keep reading?"

She couldn't find her voice. Logan continued, his tone somewhat louder.

"Pro number one-hundred and two—"

"Stop it, please."

She tore it out of his hands, crumpling all those months of careful thinking and guarded corrections where there wouldn't be a chance of someone looking over her shoulder or reading her expression too closely. Thoughts of Jess, of standing in the shower and letting the water run down her back and over her breasts, imagining his hands in those places, between her legs.

Logan cut and ran, tore out of the place, slammed the door behind him while she sank down on a modest pile of boxes and used the torn paper to wipe away her tears. By the end of her crying fit the words were illegible.

**VII.**

"Another man wants to spend the rest of his life with you, and you end up here."

His arms were crossed, his tone even. A dark lock of hair fell into his eyes; he carelessly brushed it away.

She'd worn her hair down, a small gesture, really. But a thoughtful one none-the-less. She hoped that he took notice.

"Jess."

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. "C'mon Rory, stop playing Cecilia to my lovesick Robbie. You're smarter than that."

"Obviously not." She took a step closer, holding her hands behind her back, keeping her eyes down and sometimes glancing up to meet his.

"You're really not joking."

She holds his gaze. "Dead serious."

**VIII.**

It was a major cliché, what Mr. Medina would have called the Unfinished Subplot. The correlation of events starkly contradictive in their separate literary lives, but inevitable, as fate had put it.

It was the two of them and no one else. Jess's dark bedroom with her as the centerpiece, everything rushing and slipping and being added and crossed out over the years of separation, their lives restored. All their travels and self-discovery.

Her naked back pressed against the cotton bed linins while Jess kissed her, full on, hot and sweet, running his hands along her smooth stomach, thumbing her nipples, fingers dipping below her slit. She spread her legs a little wider.

"I need—"

He ran his tongue along the inside of her thigh, palms stroking the backs of her knees, her calves. He kissed her parted slit, his lips on her cunt, fingers digging into the hollows created by her hipbones.

She was saying his name, stretching out the syllables. Je-_es_-ss. Pulling him back up on top of her. "Please."

Her wrists were being held above her head, eyes squeezed shut. He turned her face up to his. "Look at me."

Eyelashes fluttering; her pupils were faintly rimmed in blue, dilated. She wrapped her legs around his waist but felt them sliding, he was pushing her knees against the mattress.

The world moved around them, sound bending around waves of pressure and perception. Pre-victory reverberated through the Sonic Boom.

He entered her.

**A/N:** _Reviews much? 'tis all I ask._


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